Michael Antonio has admitted he’s a disappointed man at the Hammers to make a summer signing which he believes would have made a big difference to the squad.
We are talking of course about Jesse Lingard who after months and twists and turns opted for a season at Nottingham Forest on a reported £200,000 a week personal terms.
Manager David Moyes chased his favourite attacking midfielder for most of the summer but failed to find his admiring overtures returned by the former Manchester United and England star.
Mikey too is pretty down in the mouth about us missing out on a player whom he believes made a huge difference to the Irons squad and has been quite straightforward about saying so when discussing the manager’s failure top land the 29 year old.
On the Footballer’s Football Podcast, Antonio shared his frustration that the England international didn’t return to the London Stadium declaring: “I was definitely disappointed, not going to lie.
“He was a massive player and helped push us. He was one of the reasons why we did finish in Europe.”
Lingard is a bit like heartburn and indigestion that you get after a dodgy takeaway meal… just when you thought it was all over, you start getting a touch of reflux.
As far as I’m concerned, there aren’t too many innocents amongst professional footballers, and you can’t always get to play with your mates.
As far as this club is concerned the Lingard stories need to be 86’d. This is not the home for the Cult of Lingard and his social media presence, as he has already moved on.
unless a Hammer has something to say about it
There seems to be a bit of a pattern forming with West Ham’s deals not getting done, that revolves around money, if Lingard is earning 80k a week base at Forest we could have just signed him, Soucek couldn’t get a new contract agreed because of money, Zielinski we seemingly couldn’t get because of money and now it looks like Onana is going to sign for Everton because of money…. we aren’t privvy to the wages being requested and obviously it’s important to have a wage structure so as not to upset the existing players.
Hopefully am misguided on that and am only going on what the press are saying but it might be possible we need to uplift on what we are offering if we can’t get deals done or buy potential that will accept less….